THERE must be support for the plea made by your correspondent N N Aylmer in last week's issue, regarding the open space of the old primary school playing fields.

It is a most important oasis in the middle of the town. The ordinary citizen can assess how valuable it is by viewing it from the footbridge next to the council offices. It features the ancient character of the place with the confluence of the two rivers.

It seems never to have been built upon, not colonised by the Victorians, despite their vigorous and widespread building activity.

It has been virtually untouched for thousands of years, associated with the very beginnings of the town, when structures and shelters were no higher than the stature of a man.

As the meeting place between two comparable streams, perhaps it had some significance as a place where pacts between opposing tribes were made, or nuptials celebrated.

I have at some time been guilty of throwing brickbats at planners, but I see them now as Arthurian Knights facing terrible odds.

Any militarist will say that a defensive position is the weakest, and that is the position they are in in most cases. They can only say 'No' and that is a negative thing easily overwhelmed by the forceful, positive arguments of the muscular commercial.

The site referred to above is in all the Arts, including the art of living. What would music be without the quiet passages and pauses which contrast and enhance the sound.

Good books are valued not only for their content but for the presentation, good print, wide margins, the chapter finishing on half a page so that the reader can muse on the blank half of what has just been read. A Rembrandt canvas might consist of nearly two thirds impenetrable darkness from which the subject gleams magically.

So with a town and its pattern. There must be incidence and space, incidence and setting.

Here is an open space by a river in the centre of the town. If the grass and air and birdsong are sold and lost to building, it will be lost for ever. Preserved, it would be only a few minutes from the Fore Street and an escape from the dreadful breath of our tin overcoats, a place for the children to run and a rest for the tired.

G R Cook

Ranelagh Road

Okehampton